GOP Pledge Architect Canât Name A Single Program Heâd Cut From The Budget

Yesterday, House Republicans rolled out their âPledge to America,â which is supposedly a series of ideas that the GOP would enact tomorrow, if given the chance. At the top of the list, of course, is a full extension of the Bush tax cuts â at a cost of almost $4 trillion â and a promise to allow no tax increases.

At the same time, though, the Pledge claims to put the country âon a path to a balanced budget.â But when it comes to spending cuts, it is incredibly vague, including only a promise to reduce non-defense discretionary spending to the 2008 level and to âset benchmarksâ for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Today, in fact, the lead architect of the Pledge, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), couldnât name a single program that heâd cut from the federal budget when pressed by MSNBCâs Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd:

GUTHRIE: Everybody likes to cut spending, but the issue is where, how? What specifically are you going to cut? [...]

MCCARTHY: What are you going to cut? Discretionary spending. Anything thatâs not securityâ¦

TODD: Well, hang on. What is discretionary? Give us two or three items that are discretionary.

MCCARTHY: You could go through every different program within government, outside of entitlements, outside of national defense, that is discretionary spending that Congress has control of. That has gone over 88 percent in the last two years.

GUTHRIE; So what comes to mind for that, if you could wave a magic wand and do it unilaterally, what would you cut?